Reinventing artisanal knowledge and practice: a critical review of innovation in a craft-based industry

Blundel, Richard; Smith, DJ

doi:10.1080/08109028.2013.770276

Cited by 22 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 48 publications

(22 reference statements)

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“…Handmade food comes with a special attachment" (National Heritage Board, 2013, p. 94). Handmade, literally made by hand rather than machinery, works like artisanal to give food a high status and oppositional to mass-produced, industrial foods (Blundel and Smith, 2013). Handmade signifies skilled labor, not just labor, which is a way of celebrating these hawkers and signaling to the next generation that although this career is hard work, it is skilled, not manual work.…”

Section: The Vanishing Hawkermentioning

confidence: 99%

Hawkerpreneurs: Hawkers, Entrepreneurship, and Reinventing Street Food in Singapore

Tarulevicz

2018

Rev. adm. empres.

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The hawker center is an icon of contemporary Singapore and an essential element of national identity, but one that has undergone multiple reinventions. Most recently hawking has repeatedly been presented as approaching crisis, prompted by an aging hawker population. The response of the Singapore government has been to begin another historic transformation of the hawker, focusing on the hawker entrepreneur - the hawkerpreneur. Ahead of reinvention, codification of knowledge about hawking was required and provided by museum exhibitions and cultural celebrations in media. The hawker became romanticized, a figure of history, distanced from an emergent next generation. These new hawkers are imagined by public and private interests as being successful entrepreneurs and glamorous, suit-wearing people. A change in status for hawking, achieved by a new image and structural changes, such as rankings by Michelin, are being used to signal this new phase of Singaporean street food.

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Section: The Vanishing Hawkermentioning

confidence: 99%

Hawkerpreneurs: Hawkers, Entrepreneurship, and Reinventing Street Food in Singapore

Tarulevicz

2018

Rev. adm. empres.

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“…Secondly, that entrepreneurial improvisation can occur in what might at first sight appear to be unlikely contexts. So while there is a strong case for paying attention to the 'usual suspects' in technology-intensive industries, it is also important to look further afield and to recognise the potential for economic revival in less obvious places, including traditional and artisanal sectors (Blundel and Smith, 2013). The story of Paxman Bros also has implications for today's practitioners, including business owners, managers and advisers.…”

Section: Implications For Policy and Practicementioning

confidence: 99%

Improvisation and Entrepreneurial Bricolage versus Rationalisation: A case-based analysis of contrasting responses to economic instability in the UK brass musical instruments industry

Smith

Blundel

2014

Journal of General Management

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In periods of economic crisis and instability, the response of many business organisations is to try and adapt to prevailing market conditions. This typically results in a pattern of retrenchment and rationalisation designed to cut costs. Responses of this kind may be justifiable and, to varying degrees, effective at a firm-level. However, their wider repercussions can include the worsening of a pre-existing economic downturn (e.g. large- scale redundancies affecting local communities and cancelled orders affecting other firms in the supply chain). When faced with an economic crisis, some firms adopt a more entrepreneurial approach, in which the key features are strategic reappraisal and various forms of product, process and organisational innovation (Filippetti and Archibugi, 2011). While large corporations are capable of this kind of transformation, there is an increasing recognition of the important part that smaller entrepreneurial firms can play in innovation (Christensen, 1997) including the reinvigoration of industry sectors through open innovation (Chesbrough, 2003) and contributing to the reconfiguration of geographic clusters (Best, 2001). Studies of long wave cycles have shown that periods of economic crisis and depression can be important for innovation: they can disrupt established industry structures and cause entrepreneurs to see markets and customers in a different light so that they re-think products and services (Barras, 2009). However, comparatively little attention has been directed to considering just how entrepreneurial individuals in smaller firms mobilise the resources necessary for innovation and cope with risk in the unfavourable and demanding conditions that prevail in times of economic crisis. This exploratory study seeks to address this research gap. It does so through an in-depth historical case study of the contrasting responses of two firms, in the same industry sector but operating on different scales with differing modes of production (i.e. artisanal v. mechanised), to the greatest economic crisis of the 20th century, namely, the Great Depression of the 1930s (Crafts and Fearon, 2011). The two firms, which served the same markets and were affected by the same external forces, followed very different paths: the larger one engaged in a series of acquisitions as a means of rationalising production and cutting costs, while the much smaller firm that operated on a very modest scale chose to innovate. This innovation involved developing a product that was new to Britain at the time, namely the sousaphone, an unorthodox musical instrument that hitherto had only been produced in the United States. As well as comparing the activities of the two firms operating on different scales, the study examines why the owners of this small firm decided to innovate in the very difficult trading conditions that prevailed at the time, and exactly how they were able to acquire and mobilise the resources needed to pursue this path. In particular, the study focuses on the use of improvisation (Kamoche, Cun...

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“…The ten firms we studied were all located in Kyoto, and belonged to the heritage craft sector. By craft, scholars refer a broad range of economic activities characterised by some degree of manual labour (Jenkins, 1978) -"a skill of making things well" (Sennett, 2008: 8) and a variable combination of traditional and newly invented skills that are often part of the heritage of local communities (Blundel & Smith, 2013;Francisco, 2007: 979). Craft production tends to be highly embedded in local traditions and infused with cultural symbolism (Kroezen & Heugens, 2019;Sasaki et al, 2019).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Managing cultural specificity and cultural embeddedness when internationalizing: Cultural strategies of Japanese craft firms

2020

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Reinventing artisanal knowledge and practice: a critical review of innovation in a craft-based industry

Abstract: This paper presents a critical review of the ways in which the

Cited by 22 publications

References 48 publications

Hawkerpreneurs: Hawkers, Entrepreneurship, and Reinventing Street Food in Singapore

Hawkerpreneurs: Hawkers, Entrepreneurship, and Reinventing Street Food in Singapore

Improvisation and Entrepreneurial Bricolage versus Rationalisation: A case-based analysis of contrasting responses to economic instability in the UK brass musical instruments industry

Managing cultural specificity and cultural embeddedness when internationalizing: Cultural strategies of Japanese craft firms

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